Background on Biloxi

The first time I was driven through East Biloxi last November, what I saw left me speechless. The devastation was beyond anything I'd seen in this country, and rivaled disasters in Third World countries I'd visited earlier in my journalism career. From the air, flying into the Gulfport/Biloxi Airport, everything looked peaceful and lovely. The water, the beaches, the greenery all reminded me of my drives along this coast many years ago. But as the plane came in lower, a random sort of chaos started to come into view. What appeared to be backyard swimming pools turned into blue "FEMA roofs" -- tarps pulled over wrecked houses. What appeared to be piles of white "pick up sticks" morphed into shards of buildings, boats, vehicles and structures shredded by the storm. Then, even lower, weird sights: a boat hanging in a tree; giant highway signs bent backwards, facing the sky; the airport buildings covered with plywood; piles of debris everywhere. On the ground, along the streets of East Biloxi, the rubble that used to be people's homes seemed to be piled willy-nilly, here and there without any real pattern. Neat rows of working class homes had been transformed into what looked like the aftermath of a little boy's playful wrath at the end of a game of blocks. But this was nobody's game. An awful smell rose from beneath some of the wreckage -- the odor of death. Splattered in the trees were bits of clothing, paper and other, unidentifiable substances. The strange thing about this detritis was that, even when the wind blew, none of it moved. It was still as death itself. Elsewhere, shredded plastic from giant boathouses did move with the wind, like ghosts hanging from the trees. This eerie scene etched itself in my mind. Later that night, in a hotel in Mobile, Alabama (the closest place we could find a room) I sat on the bed long after midnight writing the story that appeared in Salon in December and that is reprinted in this blog.